10.24.13

Summary: GNOME is ditched by Cinnamon, which is yet another example of users and developers taking control in the interest of users

DEALING with varying user requirements is hard. There is no one-size-fits-all paradigm when it comes to desktop environments. Just as we require many types of vehicles (trucks, vans, motorcycles, etc.) we need to facilitate a variety of needs, which vary from person to person. Microsoft and Apple ignore this and they try to shoehorn people into their own restrictive environments. GNU/Linux is different. Development of KDE, the world’s most advanced desktop, carries on [1,2] and documentation improves as well [3]. The KDE Community Forums turns 5 [4] and new users come to KDE [5], which is — although it is debatable — better than GNOME when it comes to applications but not as a desktop for new users [6] (KDE is very advanced, too much for some). Cinnamon 2.0, in the mean time, is forking GNOME [7] and even ditching it [8]. It is now available in Ubuntu 13.10 [9], which is Mirless [10]. Many distributions still use classic GNOME [11] or modified GNOME [12], but what’s clear overall is that over time we are left with more choices of desktop environments. KDE itself has been forked to satisfy those who wish to keep the KDE3 experience. This is a strength, not a weakness. █

The Projectsite of the handbook is placed under: http://pactivehandbook.sf.net. There you can download a PDF in the english or german language. Also a XHTML version of the book is available in both languages there.

I moved to Kubuntu early Sunday morning, and it was not without a few minor perils. I wanted a clean install, thus formatting /home was a must. I was coming from Linux Mint 14 XFCE to Kubuntu 13.04 which of course uses KDE as the default desktop manager. I really didn’t want any cross contamination in /home nor did I want to dual-boot. It was all in or nothing. So I chose the all in and I am glad I did.

Cinnamon, the desktop shell using in Linux Mint, has finally released v2.0, which features new window tiling and snapping, along with enhanced user management options. And there are lots of other changes under the hood too, including a new backend that no longer requires GNOME.

Cinnamon 2.0, a fork of GNOME 3 desktop environment, developed by Clement Lefebvre, the father of Linux Mint, has been released to critical acclaim and now you have a chance to see it working in Ubuntu 13.10.

After approximately two weeks of testing, the Arch Linux developers promoted earlier today, October 7, the recent GNOME 3.10 desktop environment to the stable channels, allowing users to upgrade their six-month-old GNOME 3.8 installation.

Thanks to a leaked screenshot on Google+, we’ve recently discovered that the upcoming and highly anticipated SolusOS 2 Linux operating system will have a darkish and highly modified version of the recently released GNOME 3.10 desktop environment.

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The criminal enterprise known as Microsoft finds itself embarrassingly exposed in the courtroom, for the IRS belatedly (decades too late) targets the company in an effort to tackle massive tax evasions

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